Thousands of fish die as Midwest streams heat up

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees.

About 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon were killed in Iowa last week as water temperatures reached 97 degrees. Nebraska fishery officials said they've seen thousands of dead sturgeon, catfish, carp, and other species in the Lower Platte River, including the endangered pallid sturgeon. And biologists in Illinois said the hot weather has killed tens of thousands of large- and smallmouth bass and channel catfish and is threatening the population of the greater redhorse fish, a state-endangered species.

So many fish died in one Illinois lake that the carcasses clogged an intake screen near a power plant, lowering water levels to the point that the station had to shut down one of its generators.

"It's something I've never seen in my career, and I've been here for more than 17 years," said Mark Flammang, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. "I think what we're mainly dealing with here are the extremely low flows and this unparalleled heat." ................(more)

2. Another reason to pipe rain water

Store water in cooler temps, and release it into streams during times like this. We are going to find water to be scarce, and wished we had come up with ways to save a lot of it 20 years from now, if that long. Or don't we have ways to bring water temps down. There's got to be some man made thing that can do that and be set in these troubled waters to cool them down safely.

With tonight's Curiosity landing, they have ways to take the cold, why not make the cold here on Earth. We have major problems here, and yet we still have time and money to explore Mars. Use that technology here first, then go to space.

And since we let oil companies fuck up our environment, they should flip the bill for water cooling. Let Americans build it here, and keep the jobs here. There has got to be a way to cool water in mass.